A Thousand Splendid Suns A Thousand Splendid Suns is written by Khaled Hosseini. The novel is about two young women trying to make it through tough times in Afghanistan. The historical fiction novel describes the main character’s regretful, despairing, and sometimes hopeless life. Khaled Hosseini brutally tells the story and provides a strong and distinct descriptions of the characters and their setting. The setting is in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s, and A Thousand Splendid Suns was published March 22, 2007. This provides readers knowledge of what happened in Afghanistan way before their time and what was going on in the world and Khaled Hosseini did it brilliantly. The scholarly article of A Thousand Splendid Suns is written by Harvey Thompson and it states that Khaled Hosseini 's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, like his first, The Kite Runner, gives a more informed and rounded appreciation of the life of Afghan women. At first, Mariam shows only contempt towards the "Interloper," but slowly friendship develops between the two women. It lays bare the truly horrendous existence of women and girls. In beginning of the passage, Laila considers what her father says about how the,"Communists" have improved the lives of the women of Afghanistan with their insistence on education for all. Most glaring of all is Hosseini 's decision to end A Thousand Splendid Suns in April 2003-just months before large parts of Afghanistan erupted in a
Trauma in Dawn and Men in the Sun. The theme of trauma is addressed differently b y the authors of Men In The Sun and Dawn , though there have a few similarities , Gahssan Kanafani in Men In The Sun gives the readers a detailed description of not only the social realities , but the political and human ones as well that characterize the basic lives of the Palestinian people during a critical point in their history when the structure of their existence, as well as the traditional order have been significantly altered by the regional as well as international events .The author describes trauma by showing the struggles and hardships that are undergone by Abu Qais , Marwan and Assa who are all in the quest for a better life . Similarly, in Dawn, Elsie describes the wait of two men for a murder that is scheduled to take place in Dawn.
Khaled Hosseini not only shows the discrimination of minority groups but introduces the notion that people will discriminate not based on their personal views but upon which they believe as their role in society. In Afghanistan culture “Nang and namoos” defined as "pride" and "honor or dignity" is incredibly valued in the culture with people outwardly going out of their way to maintain their reputation. However, in his two novels Khaled Hosseini presents the idea that this pride inevitably leads to the discrimination of another. This is demonstrated In a Thousand Splendid Suns by the characters Jalil and Rasheed due to the way they treat those closest to them. For instance, Jalil ousts Nana outside of his home upon receiving news that she is expecting his illegitimate child.
In the surroundings of Pakistan, two young women at different times held advantage in Afghan's culture. Hosseini's novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, presents similarities and differences between Mariam and Laila. Both Mariam and Lalia are naive women with dynamic and vibrant culture. Yet, there are many differences between the two which make each one unique. Their idolized father, lifestyle, and desires show Mariam and Lalia many similarities, yet many differences as well.
Many come to know Khaled Hosseini because of his first and best-selling novel, The Kite Runner. Through the lives of the two male protagonists - Amir and Hassan, Khaled Hosseini describes an Afghan society that undergoes a significant number of hardships such as war, ethnic cleansing, and economic recession. The religious and ethnic differences, as well as the gap between rich and the poor, resulted in a very fortunate and prosperous destiny for some and life of constant struggle for others. To start with, Amir, as well as Hassan, come from two very distinct ethnic groups in
In regards to the historiography of gender politics in the Victorian era, the social position of women and femininity had become a problematic issue. Similarly, the gender apartheid instilled prior to the civil war in Afghanistan. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, initially published in 2007, is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. In this, it explores the story of Mariam and Laila as the protagonists, who teach the reader the reality of life as a woman in a backward Islamic country. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny seen from the perspectives of these two women and observes how they become to create a bond, despite having come from previously living in very different backgrounds.
"Significance of all these Chronotopes” on at least four different levels: (1) they have narrative, plot-generating significance; (2) they have representational significance; (3) they “provide the basis for distinguishing generic types”7; and (4) they have semantic significance" (Bemong 5-6) The different levels of the chronotopic elements cast light on different levels. First, the narrative technique used by the writer. In his writing, Hosseini uses the technique of an ominous writer, the third person narration.
The injustice Mariam endures in the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, leads Mariam on a struggling journey impacting her future path in life. The injustice that Mariam endures leaves a permanent mark on her life and impacts her from the beginning. Life wasted no time throwing the cruel injustices of life at Mariam. Mariam was marked a harami, otherwise known as a child without a father, even though her father Jalil was alive, near, and well. “She understood then what Nana meant, that a harami was an unwanted thing: that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person that would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.”
In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, the author Khaled Hosseini emphasizes the importance of education in woman. With the importance of education in women comes the endurance of woman. Hosseini displays the endurance of hardships that women face in Afghanistan through his female characters in the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Mariam wants to go to school and be able to learn like other children,“She pictured herself in a classroom with other girls her age.
Equality of genders is a basic human right that all should posses. However, in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the reader explores Afghanistan’s true nature of extreme gender inequality towards women and how it affects all the characters within the novel. The novel explores how within a marriage, women have unequal rights, undergo major amounts of physical abuse, and are emotionally and mentally tormented by their very own supposedly beloved husbands. A marriage is defined as a union of two people as partners in a personal relationship.
Power and Corruption When in the wrong hands, power can be used as a weapon to exploit and belittle others. If power is misused, it usually leads to dire consequents, like in A Thousand Splendid Suns, where two women fall victim to those who control them. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini proves that once a person is promoted to a place of authority, he or she will inevitably become corrupted by the power that he or she holds. For power to hold any value, one must be able to generate fear and submission from his victims.
Language is used everyday in lives. We use it to communicate with each other to show how we feel or think. Comfort can drift away from us if we do not have the ability to communicate with others. Barriers can present themselves when trying to communicate inhibiting language. In the short story Out of All Them Bright Stars by Nancy Kress, she puts an alien in a normal dinner and everyone is uncomfortable with his presence there except his waitress.
In the story, the women are oppressed by the society. This is narrated through the delivery of the main antagonist’s id, the gender inequality in enforcing laws and the marginalization of women. As a result of Rasheed’s id, Mariam and Laila are consistently physically and emotionally
They represent the plight which the Afghan women have been facing since ages. These characters give hope to the countless women who still suffer the dominance and hardships of the Afghan society. The actions of these characters symbolize their strength to endure things as they join together and retaliate against the man, and in turn the society, who has taken away their rights to live their lives according to their own choices. The ‘thousand splendid suns’ represent the thousands of Afghan women with immense potentialities who are still under the clutches of patriarchal domination and are forced to hide behind the walls. Khaled Hosseini has beautifully portrayed the cruel realities of the lives of Afghan women through Mariam and Laila and this is what separates A Thousand Splendid Suns from literary works that deal with Afghan women.
The motif of Relationships is prominent throughout The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Khaled Hosseini uses relationships to develop characters and move plot. “I was Sunni and he was Shia’a” Hosseini continues to use character opposites to express diversity in successful relationships. He does this to emphasize how different ideologies can coexist. This is inspired by his life in Afghanistan living under the Soviets, then moving to the US where people from all races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds live together.
Khaled Hosseini has an interesting way of portraying the two female protagonists. He discloses the tyranny and hostility that the Taliban enforce on women just because of their sex. A critic viewed the novel as ‘a powerful portrait of female suffering’ making the reader explicitly aware of the harsh environment Mariam and Laila had to tolerate. One review expressed that ‘Hosseini defends the rights of women to decide what to be in life’ , this could show that Hosseini directed the novel to be in favour of feminist views. Hosseini’s first book ‘The Kite